IN HIM WAS LIFE

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  The same was in the beginning with God.  All things were made by Him; and without Him was not any thing made that was made.  In Him was life; and the life was the light of men.  And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not." (John 1:1-5).

 

I think that these verses in St. John are best illustrated by the first few verses of the Bible in Genesis.  Both of these passages start with the words, "In the beginning...," and refer to the world when it was fresh and new.  To me, they also give an allegorical description of the human condition.

 

"And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep." (Genesis 1:2a).  For whatever reason - and theologians and scientists will debate this until the end - the earth was empty and without form before God began His work of regeneration in Genesis.  Similarly, our lives outside of Christ were empty, and spiritual darkness covered over the depths of our being.  There was no real purpose or form to our lives.  We were lost, seemingly set adrift in the universe without an anchor.

 

"And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters." (Genesis 1:2b).  When the Spirit of God begins to move in our lives, He gives us hope, and He gives us direction.  When God's Spirit begins to move, glorious things happen.  Miraculous things happen when God's Spirit begins to move. 

 

"And God said, Let there be light: and there was light." (Genesis 1:3).  When God spoke, His Word was revealed; and what He spoke, came to pass.  He shed His light upon the world just as He sheds His light into our hearts so that we may know His will.  After the light is revealed, God begins the work of creating order and beauty in our lives, just as He did in the beginning of the world.

 

The wonderful thing that separates our God from all those other gods that have been worshipped by men is that our God speaks.  He is not silent.  It is His pleasure that we know Him and understand Him.  It is like when we meet someone for the first time.  Unless they speak, or express themselves in some form, we cannot know too much about them.  The more they talk, however, the more we can understand who they are, and what they are like.  God's Word is the expression of Who He is, and we know that God went one step further and placed His Word in flesh and blood, and allowed Him to walk among us.  "And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth." (John 1:14).  Jesus is the Word.  He was in the beginning with God, and is God, and nothing was created without Him.  In Him is life, and the life is the light of man.  The life that He offers to us is a spiritual life, a resurrection life, and an abundant life.

 

In my own experience, it was not until the Spirit of God called me to Himself and revealed His Word to me that I could begin to comprehend Who He was, and what He expected of me.  When He spoke to my heart, there was a bright light of spiritual understanding that turned on in my soul.  I could finally see what I had been missing all my life up to that time.  When I accepted Him and simply received His great gift of redemption, I was born again, and He breathed His life into me. 

 

In the beginning, man truly had it made.  God created a beautiful world for him to live in.  He planted a garden filled with all the things necessary to sustain life.  He provided a mate to help man so that he wouldn’t be alone.  Best of all, though, was the fellowship that man enjoyed with God.  God Himself walked and talked with man, and man was innocent in his worship of his Maker. 

 

God placed two trees in Eden that were very different from all of the other trees.  They were the Tree of Life, and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.  God told Adam and Eve that they could eat freely of all the trees of the garden with the exception of one: the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.  Of course, that was the one that they felt they just had to have.  The serpent used his subtlety to beguile Eve into eating of the forbidden fruit, and then Adam ate as well. 

 

God had told the couple that in the day that they ate of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, they would die.  No, they did not keel over on the spot, but they died in a spiritual sense by losing the relationship they had previously had with the Creator.  When they sinned, they found a need to hide from God out of shame.  Also, they lost access to the Tree of Life.  They could have lived forever had they continued in obedience, but when they broke God's one commandment, death began to work on their bodies, and their days became numbered.

 

God knew from the beginning that man could not handle the knowledge of good and evil, but man had to learn that for himself.  God will not violate the free will of man, even when that free will leads him down paths that are not in his best interest.  He gives man a choice: Light, Righteousness, and Life; or darkness, sin, and death.  Unfortunately, man often has to learn the hard way that he can't do it for himself before he will yield to God's true purpose.  "He was in the world, and the world was made by Him, and the world knew Him not.  He came unto His own, and His own received Him not.  But as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His name: which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God."  (John 1:10-13)

 

In Jesus, the "Word Made Flesh," we are restored to the life and relationship with God that Adam and Eve lost in the beginning.  We again can walk and talk with our Maker, and know His will for our lives.  Just as the first couple could freely eat of all the fruits of the garden, we now find the fruit of the Spirit in abundance.  Love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, and temperance are now the characteristics that define our lives.  The light of the truth also illuminates our pathway so that we no longer need to stumble in the darkness.  Jesus Himself becomes a Tree of Life that breathes eternal life into our being and will ultimately preserve us for all eternity.  “To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the Tree of Life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God.” (Revelations 2:7).

 

As Jesus taught His disciples at one point He said, “I am the true vine, and My Father is the husbandman.” (John 15:1).  The true vine is the source of life-giving nutrients that flow up from the earth through the vine to its branches.  He said in verse 5 that “…ye are the branches…”  God the Father is the husbandman, or vinedresser, who cares for the plant, making sure it gets sufficient water and sunlight. 

 

The Lord continues: “Every branch in Me that beareth not fruit He [the Father] taketh away: and every branch that beareth fruit, He purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit.  Now ye are clean through the Word which I have spoken unto you.” (John 15:2, 3).  It is the job of the vinedresser to prune the branches of the grapevine so that they will produce the optimum quantity and quality of fruit.  We, the branches, have one job: to bring forth fruit.  Branches that are not bearing any fruit at all are in danger of being removed altogether from the plant and ultimately burned.  If the branch is bearing even the smallest bit of fruit, however, the Father will cut around that branch to encourage greater fruitfulness in the future.  Pruning may hurt, but it is the only way to remove hurtful things from our life.  Those are the things that hinder growth and interfere with the flow of life from the Vine.  Jesus said that we are clean through the Word which He speaks to us.  This is the instrument that He uses to prune the unclean things from our lives.  His Word is like a two-edged sword that pierces deeply and discerns between what is of our natural soul life and what is of our spiritual life.  It can even divide between our thoughts and our intentions (which are not always the same) (see Hebrews 4:12).

 

Jesus laid it out pretty simply for us in this 15^th chapter of John.  Read the rest of this passage and understand what is necessary to experience the new life that is in Christ Jesus.  It is as natural as nature itself.  “Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in Me.  I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in Me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without Me ye can do nothing.  If a man abide not in Me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned.  If ye abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you.  Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit; so shall ye be My disciples.” (John 15:4-8).

 

The fruit of the Spirit that the Father desires to see in us are all of the characteristics of Jesus Himself.  “Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature…” (2 Peter 1:4).  This fruit cannot be imitated.  It is a product of the Life that is in Christ Himself.  We must draw from Jesus the Vine; and we must abide in Him, if we want the fruit to be abundant in our lives.  This is the very definition of discipleship; and we have all been called to be Jesus’ disciples.  He said, “If ye continue in My Word, then are ye My disciples indeed; and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” (John 8:31, 32).

 

“I am come that they might have Life, and that they might have it more abundantly.” (John 10:10).

 

“In Him was life; and the life was the light of men.” (John 1:4).